Featured Articles Archive - 2007

This index covers all the new articles featured on our Web site. Many of the articles are contributed by our readers, others by freelance writers. Your words could be read — and your voice could be heard — by tens of thousands of our visitors and subscribers to our newsletter. Sound interesting? Submit your article today:

[The difference between the two methods is that articles submitted using the Open Publishing Initiative are generally shorter than the freelance articles, and the author does not receive monetary compensation. Freelance submissions are accepted upon receipt of a signed freelance contract. The freelance author does receive compensation.]

Once you've chosen your business and purchased a domain name the next step is to find useful and relevant keywords. This article gives you ten useful tips on how to optimize your Web pages. By Brandon Leibowitz. December 31, 2007

In this installment you'll learn about more improvements in Camtasia 5 and how to add these to your recordings. Specifically, you'll learn how to create title clips, use captioning, voice narration, Flash quizzing and surveys. By Nathan Segal. December 20, 2007

This third and final installment looks at interacting with the Silverlight control programmatically. Topics covered include: the settings property, the content property and other members. By Adam Nathan. December 17, 2007

With all the HTML editors available, you too can build Web sites for profit. Time to start a small business? No! While it's easy to publish Web pages, a lot of planning is necessary to create a viable business. In this article you'll learn how. By Peggie Brown. December 12, 2007

This week we dig deeper and look at the Silverlight.createObjectEx function, understanding your hosting options, properties, the enableHtmlAccess property, and much more. By Adam Nathan. December 10, 2007

Want to make money from blogging? Check out this article which explores the options open to you as a blogger, as well as the different revenue and affiliate programs available. By John Matthew. December 6, 2007

Despite the options available with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, accommodating their differences can be maddening. Enter Silverlight, a plug-in for multiple Web browsers on multiple platforms that makes it easier to create rich content. By Adam Nathan. December 3, 2007

This installment looks at more of the improvements made in Camtasia Studio 5. Specifically, it takes a look at clips, stability improvements, changes in frames per second (fps) for better editing, editing procedures, working with callouts and new transition options. By Nathan Segal. November 30, 2007

In this release, new features include key enhancements that allow visitors to register on your site and provide basic profile information for display to other site visitors. By Dan Ragle. November 21, 2007

Pay-per-click marketing is often quite expensive and is one of the major complaints of small businesses. An alternative? Work at improving your organic search results. By Michael Fleischner. November 19, 2007

The term Ajax is often referred to as a new type of technology, but is actually several technologies that work together. This review looks at how to get started using Ajax and the different technologies involved. By Lee Underwood. November 14, 2007

In this tutorial we're going to have a closer look at the streamlined recorder, covering locking to the application, the new project settings, SmartFocus, the new zoom and pan features and more. By Nathan Segal. November 8, 2007

One important topic for blog owners is how to increase traffic, which is easier than it seems, once you know how. In this article, you'll learn about 7 effective methods. By Terry Detty. November 5, 2007

It's not necessary to understand the characteristics of Ajax in order to use it. This article provides copy and paste JavaScript with an Ajax engine. No modifications are necessary. By William Bontrager. October 31, 2007

This week wraps up our section on Object-Oriented JavaScript with a look at prototypes, the JavaScript execution context, inheritance using closures and prototypes and more. By Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea. October 29, 2007

In this article we're going to look at the major new features of Camtasia Studio 5, including: the streamlined recorder, SmartFocus, ExpressShow, new editing features, features for bloggers, FTP and Screencast, transitions and the project settings. By Nathan Segal. October 24, 2007

Not only can JavaScript functions contain other functions, but they can also be instantiated. This makes JavaScript functions a good candidate for implementing the concept of a class from traditional object-oriented programming. By Cristian Darie, Bogdan Brinzarea. October 22, 2007

Designing Web pages can be a time consuming endeavor, especially if you have to start from scratch. Fortunately, if you use Dreamweaver, you can make use of SiteAssist, a Dreamweaver extension that allows you to build customized templates using table-based or CSS layouts. By Nathan Segal. October 18, 2007

This week we cover OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) and how it relates to JavaScript. Topics covered include: what encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism mean, how JavaScript functions work, how to implement inheritance using closures, prototypes and more. By Cristian Darie and Bogdan Brinzarea. October 15, 2007

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to get your message noticed on the Web. While blogging has now become a hot method for teens to broadcast their thoughts, it's also a great Internet marketing tool. By Rodney T.. October 10, 2007

When building XML-enabled PHP/Oracle applications, the database can be used as an efficient means of storing XML data and will operate on any kind of data that can be expressed in XML. PHP's XML extensions allow you to take advantage of Oracle XML DB. By Yuli Vasiliev. October 8, 2007

Check out this review I did on Synergy software. It allows a user to share one keyboard and one mouse with multiple computers. The computers don't even have to be running the same operating systems. And, it's free! By Lee Underwood. October 3, 2007

One of the great challenges facing computer artists is productivity, especially with repetitive tasks. Fortunately, automation can ease the drudgery of these tasks and that is the subject of this book. By Nathan Segal. September 27, 2007

Oracle XML DB allows you to perform SQL operations on XML data as well as XML operations on relational data, thus bridging the gap between the SQL and XML worlds. You can choose between several storage options and achieve required levels of performance and scalability. By Yuli Vasiliev. September 24, 2007

Today many people rely on computers to do homework, work, create, etc., so it's important to take special care with your data storage. This week you'll learn about how to protect your data and prevent intrusions. By Vincent Deguzman. September 19, 2007

This week you'll learn how to use XML in PHP and Oracle when building XML-enabled PHP/Oracle applications. Topics covered include: constructing XML with the PHP DOM extension, navigating XML with XPath, generating XML from relational data with Oracle SQL/XML functions, and more. By Yuli Vasiliev. September 17, 2007

There are many benefits of inheritance with PHP, the most common is
simplifying and reducing instances of redundant code. In this article
you'll work with PHP 5 and Object Oriented Programming (OOP) to create
a scalable application. By Kris Hadlock.

In the last part of this series, you'll learn how to build a declarative component for an application with a list of customers which is populated from a server-side data handler using Ajax. By David Johnson, Alexei White, and Andre Charland. September 10, 2007

In this installment, you'll go through the steps of building an Ajax DataGrid control, which is used to iterate over a list of JavaScript objects. Other topics covered are the behavior component, databinding, templating and the declaration. By David Johnson, Alexei White, and Andre Charland. September 4, 2007

Now that Ajax is becoming a standard for handling interactions on the Web it's time to use it to update form submissions. In this article you'll learn how to create a reusable Ajax process for all forms. The source code and a working demo is included. By Kris Hadlock. August 29, 2007

This tutorial looks at how to actually build a user interface. You will learn how to encapsulate Ajax functionality into both imperative, as well as declarative, components. By David Johnson, Alexei White, and Andre Charland. August 27, 2007

In this article you'll learn how to prevent errors in your forms. This method validates the form and provides immediate feedback to the user. If the form has been correctly filled out, the submit button is enabled, if not, the button remains grayed out. By Kris Hadlock. August 22, 2007

You've successfully recorded your podcast and you want to get it online. Before you do so, you need to use Audacity to clean up the recording and edit it. This week you'll learn about the most common tasks. By Dominic Mazzoni and Scott Granneman. August 20, 2007

Most consumer Web sites contain a form used to collect postal addresses. This article demonstrates how a UK address can be automatically filled from the postal code or known part of the address, using the PostCoder Web SOAP service from Allies Computing Ltd. By Drew Clayton. August 16, 2007

ThinWire is an LGPL open source framework that allows you to build responsive, expressive and interactive Web applications without the complexities found with other methods. By Joshua Gertzen, Ted C. Howard. August 13, 2007

In the previous article you learned how to create an animation with JavaScript using a timer mechanism, an image of a ball and CSS styles. This time you'll learn how to create a simple ping-pong game. These JavaScript tools will allow you to create games such as Breakout, Tetris, Frogger and more. By Lisha Sterling. August 9, 2007

This article will show how to construct a complete, working Ajax application. As with any Ajax application, it will make use of an HTML document, JavaScript routines, a server-side routine (PHP), and a callback function to deal with the returned data. By Phil Ballard. August 6, 2007

Adding RSS feeds to a Web site can be very beneficial. Feed Editor Lite is an excellent editor for RSS feeds. The creators of the software have made it very easy to use, without having to learn RSS or XML. By Lee Underwood. August 2, 2007

An autoresponder letter series, if written properly, can make you some serious money on the Internet. Studies have proven that most consumers buy only after repeated exposure to a product. This repeated exposure helps you to gain their trust enough to buy from you. By Debbie Drucker. July 25, 2007

This excerpt is taken from "The Official Ubuntu Book." Written by expert leading Ubuntu community members, the book covers Ubuntu 7.04 from start to finish: installation, configuration, desktop productivity, games, management, support, and much more. This chapter excerpt covers using the desktop. If you haven't tried Ubuntu yet, check out what you're missing. By Benjamin Mako Hill, Jono Bacon, Ivan Krstic, David Murphy, Jonathan Jesse, Peter Savage and Corey Burger.. July 23, 2007

Partial page rendering removes the need for the entire Web page to be refreshed as the result of a postback. Instead, only regions that have changed are updated, speeding up user interaction with the Web site. By Madhusudan Pagadala. July 20, 2007

This the first release of webps, a Web-based front-end to the familiar Linux/UNIX ps utility. With webps, administrators can pull up ps lists using only a Web browser from any Internet connected location. By Dan Ragle. July 18, 2007

When promoting your Web site you want to make sure visitors will want to return again. To make that happen, you need to address many aspects of promotion, such page layout, site preparation, optimization, seo strategies, etc., which are covered in this article. By Rajesh Tavarki. July 16, 2007

This week you'll learn about real-time validation, when and where to inject this functionality into your own applications and how to validate popular data types such as phone numbers, dates and e-mail addresses. By Michael Morrison. July 12, 2007

Opt-in e-mail lists not only allow you to instantly test an idea and get immediate results, but they also give you the ability to maintain traffic and hits during slow periods. By Terry Detty. July 10, 2007

Color adjustment is one of the most important aspects of working with images. This week you'll learn how to turn red roses blue, change a sky from midday to sunset and back again, bring out the detail in shadows, and control every imaginable aspect of color manipulation. By Carla Rose and Kate Binder. July 2, 2007

An operator is a special character or combination of characters that operates on variables. There are 3 types of operators in PHP: unary, binary and ternary. This week you'll learn about the differences between these operators. By Michael Berman. June 27, 2007

"The more complex the system, the more open it is to total breakdown." In this article you'll learn about the complexity of software and the difficulties of managing the development process. By Grady Booch, Bob Maksimchuk, Michael Engle, Bobbi Young, Jim Conallen and Kelli Houston. June 25, 2007

Almost every database driven Web site uses alternating row colors when displaying a list of records, a concept used all over the Internet. In this article you'll learn about the process and how to implement it. By Michael Berman. June 20, 2007

This week you'll learn about the basics of implementing SOA components using the REST paradigm. REST stands for Representational State Transfer. For simple applications, REST is an easy way to get started. By Mark Hansen. June 18, 2007

JavaScript animations aren't difficult to write. Once you learn a few main ideas, you can create complex animations to display in your browser. Additionally, the content will be available to search engines because the content is in machine-readable (X)HTML. By Lisha Sterling. June 13, 2007

Nobody writes software entirely in-house anymore. Almost everyone relies upon libraries and frameworks written by someone else. This allows programmers to concentrate on the actual logic of the application and shortens the development time. By Tim Boudreau, Jaroslav Tulach, and Geertjan Wielenga. June 11, 2007

This tutorial is the last one in our series. This week you'll learn how to produce a video and output it to Flash format. A bonus section at the end includes important tips about how to get the best results from your output. By Nathan Segal. June 7, 2007

Most musicians today have a Web site which they use to market their CD's, band schedules, and merchandise. Among the many marketing options, one approach is to customize a Web page on MySpace to use for your band. This week you'll learn how to do it. By Lee Underwood. June 4, 2007

Building Web site traffic is one of the most important aspects of creating a successful online presence. An important key is learning how to maximize your visibility which you'll learn about in this article. By Kristina Mills. May 31, 2007

This installment covers another method of recording video, Picture in Picture (or PIP) and editing the timeline. It also includes an update to Camtasia Studio 4, which offers more video creation and output options. By Nathan Segal. May 24, 2007

New in PHP 5 is the filter library of PECL code. This filter package (in beta as of this moment) offers two types of security, data validation by type and data sanitization. By Larry Ullman. May 28, 2007

A common misconception among many people is that Web development and Web design are synonymous. This article explores the distinctions between the two careers, including some of the skills you need to pursue them. By Gabrielle Gayheart. May 21, 2007

When you think of interactive multimedia on the Web, you probably think of Flash. But Flash creates accessibility problems, especially for those with disabilities. A solution isÂ to use JavaScript, which avoids many of the issues inherent in Flash. By Lisha Sterling. May 17, 2007

With more and more personal information being stored on the Web, such as credit card data, social security numbers, etc. - today's PHP developer cannot afford to be ignorant when it comes to security, but many programmers fail to understand it's importance. This week you'll learn how to make your applications more secure. By Larry Ullman. May 14, 2007

This week we look at getting ready to record. Here we cover what you want to say, storyboarding, recording tips/times, audio quality, video quality, cleaning up your browser, the recording process and more. By Nathan Segal. May 9, 2007

Although podcasting has become very popular, that doesn't mean blogging is a dying art. If you take the time to browse around the Internet, you'll see that blog hosting communities are still rapidly growing. In this article, the author looks at several popular blogging applications. By . May 7, 2007

This version of Simple Comments adds several new features, including optional CAPTCHA authentication on comment submissions, RSS format comment feeds, and the ability for administrators to reply to a comment from directly within the comment approval screen. By Dan Ragle. May 2, 2007

Programming in a CGI environment can be tricky. There's no built-in CGI debugger, and error messages can easily get lost or misplaced. Fortunately, there are options. Here are some Perl hacks you can use to help debug your CGI programs. By Steve Oualline. April 30, 2007

Video tutorials are quickly becoming the learning medium of choice since users can see tasks in real time. In addition, you can stop the playback, rewind, step through the video and more. In this four-part series, you'll learn how to create video tutorials. By Nathan Segal. April 25, 2007

This week you'll learn about what you can do with webbots and how they capitalize on browser limitations. You'll learn creative ideas forÂ exploiting webbots and how to use them to your advantage. By Michael Schrenk. April 23, 2007

For many people, learning JavaScript can be a bit stressful. Through writing The JavaScript Diaries, I've read and reviewed many books. Some are good and others are a "bit tedious." A few are excellent. The Book of JavaScript falls in the latter category. By Lee Underwood. April 18, 2007

The promise of e-commerce is of great success online. If your business model is solid, there's a good chance that you'll prosper. In this article you'll learn how to retain your business integrity on the Web. By Josh Greenfield. April 16, 2007

This excerpt goes into detail about the basic elements of JavaScript and introduces you to other aspects of the JavaScript language, such as loops, arrays, and functions. By Tom Negrino and Dori Smith. April 12, 2007

In previous installments, author Guyon Roche kept the user experience somewhat spartan which allowed the application to be modified with a minimum of effort. In this installment he adds points, ellipses, bezier curves and takes a look at a new application class called Control, which allows users to tell the Doodle application what shape they want to draw next. By Guyon Roche. April 4, 2007

The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a UI framework for Java developers to create interactive user interfaces using familiar idioms from Java's Abstract Window Toolkit, Swing, and the Eclipse Foundation's SWT. This short cut assumes that you've already installed GWT and have experimented with its basic features. By David Geary. April 2, 2007

One of the most common questions about Ajax is whether it's possible to create remote or cross-domain Ajax requests. The answer is yes and this week you'll learn how to create an Ajax-enabled podcast aggregator with PHP and Ajax. By Kris Hadlock. March 28, 2007

Web 2.0 is the name given to the post dot-com boom and bust of Internet growth. Companies such as eBay, PayPal and Amazon have proven that business can be conducted on the Web and it can be profitable. Now it's our turn. By Allen Taylor. March 26, 2007

Looking for opportunities to reach new visitors? Check out the explosion of mobile phone users which offers the largest distribution platform on earth. With a registration process that began in 2006, 400,000 .mobi domain names have been registered. By Lee Underwood. March 21, 2007

This final installment we look at the role of XML in Ajax. Topics covered include the tree data structure, well-formed XML documents, the XMLHttpRequest object, XSLT and plenty of coding examples. By Ed Woychowsky. March 19, 2007

This week you'll learn about Web behavior exhibited by many users and how to capitalize on that by devising keywords and phrases to boost targeted traffic (and sales). Topics covered are keyword research, related words, misspelled words and more. By . March 14, 2007

With all the new technologies being developed for the Web, forms are still the best method for collecting information from visitors. HTML is the most widely used method but it can cause accessibilty issues. Fortunately, there's another option, Accessible Forms Creator. By Lee Underwood. March 7, 2007

This week is the conclusion of our series. Topics covered are blog categories, creating new blog entries and updating entries. Adding blog categories uses a page similar to the one for adding comments. By Jono Bacon. March 5, 2007

From time to time even the most experienced programmers get stuck, hence the need for effective help files. This Perl primer takes a look at the "Plain Old Documentation" (POD) included with the Perl distribution and embedded in practically all publically available Perl modules. By Dan Ragle. March 1, 2007

In this installment, you're going to build the category browser. You'll create a page that allows users to browse the different categories and see which blog entries have been posted in each category. By Jono Bacon. February 26, 2007

One of the planned features for this blog is to add comments to a blog entry. When comments have been posted, you can display the number of comments and the names of the posters, which double as hyperlinks, so when you click the poster's name, the application jumps to that poster's comment. By Jono Bacon. February 19, 2007

Reciprocal linking is a strategy that Web marketing specialists use for the purpose of generating higher search engine positioning and more site traffic. It's also become a favorite technique for fraud since some Web sites try to outwit their linking partners. By Monica Lorica. February 21, 2007

Nearly 85% of all knowledge obtained online starts with somebody doing research on one or more search engines. This week you'll learn about the history of some popular search engines and the importance of using search engines to grow your business. By Shirley Kelly. February 14, 2007

The basic function of a blog is to store a series of blog posts (often called entries), but many blogs also include commenting, categorization and archives. This week you'll learn how to build a blog that incorporates these features. By Jono Bacon. February 12, 2007

The publisher describes this book as "the definitive reference for the principles, patterns, methodologies, and best practices underlying exceptional Web design." If you've been looking for an all-in-one guide about Web design, check it out. By Lee Underwood. February 7, 2007

With JavaScript you can update the content on your pages automatically - every day, every hour, or every second. Here, you'll learn about a simple script that automatically changes the date on your Web page. By thau!. February 5, 2007

Niche marketing is one of the hot new trends on the Internet these days. This type of marketing offers a lot of potential, but it's easy to get lost in the crowd. This week you'll learn what it takes to succeed. By . January 31, 2007

In the last part of this series -- "The Building Blocks: Data Types, Literals, Variables, and Constants", we look at creating constants with the define() function, the constant() function, predefined and "magic" constants. By Ellie Quigley. January 29, 2007

SEO is one of the great challenges facing webmasters these days. Many books have been written about it and there are some compelling success stories. But what's involved? Here's an inside look at one couple's experience. By Webwings Internet Marketing. January 25, 2007

This week we look at valid names, declaring, initializing, and displaying variables and mixed data types. The section concludes with an introduction to form variables. By Ellie Quigley. January 22, 2007

DHTML components or widgets exist all over the Internet as calendars, toolbars, menus, etc. This week you'll learn about configuring DHTML widgets, the pros and cons and programming techniques to avoid errors and speed up development time. By Nicolas Erlijman. January 17, 2007

A program can do many things, including perform calculations, sort names, prepare phone lists, display images, play chess, ad infinitum, based on the data given to it. Data types specify what kind of data can be stored and manipulated within a program. By Ellie Quigley. January 15, 2007

The World Wide Web is no longer a novelty. To many companies and organizations, the Web is a necessity, the foundation of their businesses. This week you'll discover the thinking behind customer-centered design and learn how to apply it to your projects. By Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong. January 11, 2007

This is a new editor by Microsoft, which is designed to replace FrontPage. In this review I took a look under the hood of this new program and found some unexpected surprises. By Lee Underwood. January 8, 2007

The Simple Comments script is a Perl-based system that allows you to add a talkback facility to your Web pages. In this release, the script now supports the ability to reply to a previously posted comment. There are a few more additions and bug fixes also. This is a nice upgrade. Check it out. By Dan Ragle. January 4, 2007

Using external CSS files to specify the design attributes in your files produces clean HTML code and will create better search engine rankings. With some knowledge of CSS you can change the code without destroying the visual layout. By Mikhail Tuknov. January 2, 2007